


Worldbuilding 1: The Strange Case of Benjamin Russell

by JoAsakura



Series: X-Force: Mutant Crimes Investigation Unit [1]
Category: MCIU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in light of Monet facing 'Star's fragmenting self-image: http://joasakura.deviantart.com/art/casefile-16-very-rough-sketch-148964781</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worldbuilding 1: The Strange Case of Benjamin Russell

1

Scene: Washington Square. Near the entrance to the 4th ave subway station. It's a nice summer evening and the sidewalk is crowded with pedestrians and people peddling their wares. In particular, there's a redhead doing what appears to be some street magic. He stands out, not just because he's tall, but he's gorgeous too- messy copper hair and the scruff of a goatee, bright eyes and and easy smile. some sleight of hand, some "mind reading", but nothing so spooky as to tip people off that he's a mutant.

But Jeremy Stevens knows otherwise. In another universe, Jeremy's telepathic abilities spiralled so far out of control that he became the omnipath known as "Gamemaster". Here, though, he's a knight in service of the Hellfire Club's Black King, Sebastian Shaw.

Jeremy has a nice loft, expensive, good views. Shaw pays exceptionally well. He doesn't need to take the subway with the plebes, but he enjoys playing with the minds of his fellow passengers. It makes his commute over to Shaw's offices on Park infinitely more entertaining. They never notice him before hand. Average height, average build, slightly thinning sandy brown hair, faded blue eyes. They notice the suit more than they notice what's in it. Not that it matters.

But a few days ago, something even more entertaining appeared, in the form of the redhead not more than twenty feet away. Jeremy's been skating around in Ben Russell's brain for the last half-hour. Not enough to make him feel that odd kind of deja vu that most people get when a telepath's been trampling their synapses, but more than enough to read him like a magazine.

A high school dropout. A string of arrests for everything from pickpocketing to prostitution. Kicked out of his family home in Boston for being gay. Well, not just for being gay. That's the most delicious thing of all that Jeremy finds.

The kid is a mutant, too. Kicked out not only for being gay, but for reading the psychic imprints on his father's car keys to realise the old man was banging the secretary down at the auto garage. His mind-reading tricks are just little applications of his mutant talent.

Shaw's tasked Jeremy with finding new talent. And, Stevens thinks, he can have some serious fun with this one too while he's at it.

2

Scene: an apartment. decorated expensively, tastefully, but impersonally. Ben Russell is waking up in a bed that's not his with a headache that's about five times the size of his skull.

And he's naked. That last part doesn't bother him as much as it would most people. His "side work" often has him waking up naked in other people's apartments. He just usually remembers the part where he gets there in the first place.

And that's when he notices Jeremy.

"uhm. So..." Ben starts, raking back his hair and squinting at the sunlight that sounds like a herd of elephants trampling through his brain. He thinks it's a hangover.

It's not. At least not one from booze. it's the hangover from the psychic blast that Jeremy Stevens knocked him out cold with. The telepath's been tweaking his memories, just a little bit, ever since.

"Oh, hey, you're awake." Jeremy sets down the WSJ he's been reading. "How you feeling?"

"...confused." Ben smiles. It's a default polite-nervous smile, and Jeremy resists the urge to tweak it further. "Where.. am I?"

"Geeze. Uhm. You came stumbling on to me when I got off the train. I couldn't just leave you- you seemed kinda drugged. I'm Jeremy, by the way."

"Wow. Uhm, thanks." Jeremy's pleased to see that smile warm. "Is this your place?" Jeremy's also pleased to see the casual way Ben touches the bedpost, the small flare of his powers to read whatever impressions might be on the furniture.

 

3

"Oh, no, no." Jeremy puts his hands up, non-threatening. "It's my boss's. He keeps some apartments for guests of his company."

"Nice new furniture." Ben says carefully and Jeremy likes that too. He's cute AND cautious.

"yeah, just had it redecorated, I think." Jeremy's getting bored by this now, though. it's always the same, he gets bored with how slowly other people think. So he pushes, just a little. Not enough to really mess with his perceptions, just a tweak. Ben's memories already show he's more than willing to trade sexual favours for acceptance.

"I don't know how to thank you.. for not leaving me out there." He says, long fingers fiddling with the soft sheets. "I mean... I don't have any money really and.. " Ben blushes a little then. "This is not really the best way to bring it up, but I could..."

"Are you offering... what I think you are?" Jeremy feigns surprise well. This isn't the first one he's given a nudge in the right direction.

The sex is amazing, Jeremy thinks afterwards. He was definitely charging too little. And pushing the right levels of dopamine and oxytocin? The glazed look in Russell's eyes tells him everything he needs to know.

4

Scene: A new apartment. Ben has moved in with Jeremy. It seems like a nice situation. The first time in ages that Ben hasn't had to exist on the shady edge of the legal system in years. Jeremy insists that he doesn't have to worry about having to work. So he cooks, plays housewife.

"Hey, come on." Jeremy says, a possessive hand stroking through Ben's hair as they lay tangled on the couch. "I get to come home every day to the most beautiful person in new york. and you're a great cook."

"I just.. I feel like I'm taking advantage of you." Ben sighs. "I just don't have much in the way of marketable skills."

"Don't be silly" jeremy says with a fond smile.

What about your psychometry, Jeremy's suggestion goes. It was told to him, whispered one night after sex. My boss is always looking for people with... special skills.

5

Sebastian Shaw scares the shit out of Ben Russell. Without Jeremy in the office with him, it's just Russell and this hugely imposing man.

"Jeremy tells me that you're a very special young man." Shaw says in an indulgent voice. "Do you mind... showing me?"

Ben smiles and swallows nervously. "Certainly, sir."

Shaw gestures to a set of keys on his desk. "Read those, then."

"these are?" Ben asks as he takes them.

"my car keys" Shaw's eyebrow arch is the kind of thing that ends careers.

Ben turns them over in his hand. "They're for your car, but you don't drive." He smiles. "A woman drives you. I can see her looking in the rearview at you. She loves her job... but.." and he frowns. "She thinks the corset and the thong kind of chafe?"

Shaw laughs, and it doesn't put Ben at ease. "Nice. Now, come here." His tone isn't one you argue with, so Ben follows him to a hidden safe.

"Sir, I shouldn't even.." Ben starts and shaw shushes him. Orders him to read the safe.

"You have the combination set to the day you're planning on killing some guy named Donald Pierce" Ben says nervously. "And wow, do you really hate him."

Shaw actually guffaws then. "I think you'll be a wonderful asset to our group, Benjamin. Wonderful."

 

6  
Scene: The Hellfire Club, NYC. A general party, not an inner circle event, so the ornate georgian-style hall is filled with the Rich, the Famous and the Powerful. This has been a very, very good month for Jeremy Stevens.

He sits, sipping champagne as he watches his prize asset circulate through the room. Ben is charming, and the cut of the black leather uniform that Shaw ordered made for him enhances his gorgeous body. He makes conversation, does little magic tricks, everything that gives him access to casual touches. The members love him.

Many of the regular members don't know about the inner circle, don't know that Jeremy and the other court telepaths (every king and queen has at least a few in their employ) are skipping merrily through their forebrains, looking for information that might increase their employers' influence. But the higher ups, the elite, they know. And the truly canny ones have either extremely good shields or have someone doing it for them.

Which is where Ben's power comes in. It's impossible to shield against psychometry - from the random imprints that everyone leaves on everything- and the talent is so rare that it doesn't even occur to most telepaths to try. And Ben is very good.

Jeremy doesn't startle when Shaw claps his huge hand on his shoulder. "Jeremy, there's someone I want you to meet." It's Emmanuel DaCosta and his teenage son. Jeremy knows him very well, actually. The black rook. one of the inner circle. Jeremy knows him very well because he's gunning for DaCosta's position - and Ben is one of his tickets there.

Soon.

7

Scene: Hellfire club, private chambers. At least Ben waited until they were away from the crowd to pass out.

It's been happening with greater frequency lately, and Shaw's doctors have confirmed Jeremy's suspicions. Ben's got a secondary mutant power- a healing factor. Not the class of, say, wolverine's, but enough. Jeremy first noticed it when he watched a shaving cut on Ben's chin fade over the course of a few minutes.

the problem with the healing factor is that it keeps resetting Ben's brain chemistry. Mind control's not just about messing with people's memories, Jeremy knows very well - at least not effective, long-term mind control. It's about tweaking the right chemicals to keep those new thoughts and feelings in good standing. And the longer Jeremy tweaks Ben, the more his body has started to fight back.

"I think Mr. Shaw's been working you too hard, babe." Jeremy soothes, stroking Ben's hair as the young man lies on the leather couch.. "How about I put in for some vacation time for us? Maybe somewhere tropical. Quiet??"

Ben's smile is weary and grateful. "I don't know what I did to deserve you." he says, and Jeremy only smiles.

8

The offices of Sebastian Shaw. Glass and stone and steel and dark wood. Imposing, like the man. On the desk is a metal box festooned with radiation warning symbols. But what's in it isn't radioactive. at least not in any normal sense.

It looks like an eggshell, the size of the palm of Shaw's hand and vaguely opalescent. It doesn't glow, but it seems like it should.

"A fragment of the Phoenix Egg." Shaw rumbles. His personal assistant, Tessa, stands behind him. She's his driver, his secretary and most importantly his psychic shield. Ben and Jeremy stand on the other side of the desk.

Jeremy's explained to Ben that the Phoenix is a being of unimaginable power. He has not explained that he remembers when the White Court had taken control of a man named John Grey, the earthly host for the Phoenix, and that affair had left their mind-control specialist, Jason Wyngarde, with the cerebral equivalent of Tunguska.

But all Ben needs to do is read the fragment, find out if that really what it is. Then they can take their vacation.

"I don't even want to touch it." Ben says softly, his hand shaking a little bit. "It feels like it's pushing me away."

"It's ok, babe. You'll be fine." Jeremy says and gives Ben a little mental nudge.

It's lucky the office is heavily soundproofed, because Ben's scream before Jeremy can shut him down, is the most horrible thing he's ever heard.

 

9

There had been the business with the nightmares, too. Jeremy had caught the edge of them at night, Ben's restless form beside him in bed.

There had been a woman once, Jeremy remembers her fondly as one of his favourite games- he'd driven her slowly mad with ever-increasing nightmares. But these aren't directly of his doing. When he peeks inside of them, he sees hideous blob-creatures wearing Ben's father's face, tormenting him under a red sky. he sees scraps of the information the young man's read too.. all of it leaking together and blended well with the stress of fluctuating brain chemistry.

When he catches them, Jeremy stuffs the nightmares in a box in the corner of Ben's brain and replaces them with nothing but dreamless darkness. He can't have his best asset not sleeping well.

10

Scene: a private hospital. a private room within. Tasteful and sterile. Ben Russell is restrained, strapped to a bed of starchy white sheets and chrome. He clawed one of his eyes out before Jeremy had brain-stunned him into a quivering pile, and the doctors here are keeping him sedated out of his gourd.

It's rare that Shaw comes to hospitals, but he stands in the room flanked by Tessa and Jeremy, staring down at the pale young man with the red hair spread out around him.

"What do you suppose this 'white hot room' he was screaming about is, Stevens?" Shaw asks. His tone is neutral, but Jeremy didn't need to be a telepath to sense the words underneath it. (I'm very disappointed in you and your asset, Jeremy)

"I don't know, sir." Jeremy tries to ignore Tessa's smug smirk. Bitch. When he's black rook, he'll find a way to be rid of her, too. "When he's calmer, I'll be able to sift through his thoughts better. They're like a sea of broken glass now."

"Make it soon. We need to know if that fragment is truly part of the phoenix shell."

At Jeremy's insistence, the nurses taper off the sedation. Ben's eye has regrown somewhat, milky and blind. He may never see out of it again, or he may not. His healing factor is definitely untested in this area.

"Ben?" Jeremy asks. Ben's mind is a sludgy mess from the shock and the sedation, and all Jeremy's probes get when he moves past the surface pain and confusion is.. nothing. white. empty. The white hot room Ben had screamed about, maybe.

"hi." His voice is ragged and broken from the screams. "what happened?"

"You had a problem, Ben. Mr. Shaw was very disappointed in your reaction." Jeremy says, almost-kindly, stroking his hair. "You didn't read the fragment right."

"I can't." Ben rasps,one hand moving weakly in the restraints. "I can't. I can't go back in the white hot room." He pleads.

11

Scene: Hospital. Tessa is bringing the box with the fragment to Benjamin Russell at Shaw's orders. The boy can do it this time, Jeremy's insisted. Tessa's concerns- that Jeremy has pushed Ben beyond the limits of his ability and usefulness have not gone unheard, and her other orders are to shut Jeremy down if necessary, before Shaw becomes jeopardised by his actions.

She arrives in time to see the one of Shaw's doctors, removing syringes from a cart. "What are you doing, Jeremy?" she asks, shifting the box in her hands.

"Tessa." Jeremy isn't surprised that Shaw didn't come. And as much as he wants tessa dead, trying to kill her now would be useless. "I'm going to have them boost Ben's ability, so he can move past whatever this blankness is that he keeps seeing."

The vials are labeled "Hypercortisone-D" and Tessa frowns. "Kick. you're giving him Kick?"

"Please. Kick is the cut down street crap." Jeremy sniffs. "this is medical grade and delivered by a professional. It'll boost both his powers and everything will be right with the world."

Tessa looks down into the boy's glazed blue eye and thinks differently.

When the drug hits his system, for a moment, nothing happens. Jeremy starts to say something, but then Ben arches up, thrashing and straining against the bonds and sound falls in on itself.

Tessa stumbles back, clutching the box (which is vibrating madly in her hands) and bringing her own mental shields up. The shockwave she feels against them is not anything like any sort of psychic ability. As the building rattles and the lights go dark, she realises that it was never his power all along.

Outside the window, a bright summer afternoon has turned blood red, buildings turned into rotting edifices, the room around them looks the same. Then just as quickly it's as if the shockwave's been pulled back in on itself and everything is normal again.

Almost everything. Car alarms are going off like crazy outside. The doctor is looking around, terrified. Vials of drugs, fallen from the cart, have shattered all over the floor.

oh, yes. Tessa notes, then. Jeremy Stevens is shattered on the floor as well. Eyes and ears bleeding, face caught in a rictus of horror. He'd been connected to Ben Russell's mind at the time.

Ben Russell is not dead, Tessa comes to find out, but he might as well be. That burst of power left him with a functioning brainstem, and little else.

12

Sebastian Shaw never considered himself an unusually cruel man. He does things he finds... necessary.

So when he orders Tessa to find a care facility for Ben- one that, presented with enough money and appropriately altered documents, will not press the issue of his identity- he considers it an act of necessity. Russell was a useful asset for his short time in Shaw's employ and the failure was Jeremy Steven's fault, in truth.

Shaw finds himself annoyed. From Tessa's description, what the New York area had read as a minor earthquake had been much more. He amends his orders to her to include specifications for testing Russell's comatose body to see if his theory is correct.

Russell wasn't a psychometer. That was only a small facet presenting of a much larger, latent powerset. He was a reality-warper and Jeremy Stevens' mishandling of him had cost Shaw an asset that had potentially been as valuable as the Phoenix would have been.

If Jeremy wasn't already dead, Shaw would kill him.

13

It was only a pocket dimension, a bubble of spacetime that produced a world with blood red skies and cruel-faced yellow blobs pulling themselves out of the swamps. Eventually one would be born a genius, and driven by an imperative hard-wired into the creation of his world, he created a race different from his own.

Arize never knew why he created Longshot exactly the way he did. But he knew it was a step towards something else. Another step when Longshot fell in love with exactly the right woman. Another step when the timedancer took their child. She knew, later on, all of the steps. A universe's uneven, corrupted attempt to rebuild the soul of it's very creator.

When the witch named Spiral watched Longshot finish the ritual that transferred the life of one into the body of the other, she wept.

14

The man named Shatterstar has two sets of memories up to a certain point. Where one set becomes confused and fractured, he chalks up to whatever event landed his twinned existence in a coma and he doesn't speak of it, even to Julio.

So when he meets Sage for the first time, when X-Force is requested to aid Excalibur on a mission, he doesn't know why she disturbs him so.

He just knows he has a strange dream about an empty white room that night.


End file.
